November 23, 2009

Gableman's [teevee Ad] was grossly misleading — and it aired during a race for Supreme Court justice, a position entrusted with finding truth and clarity from conflicting views.

Correct, and the polity's granting of that special position of trust is among the reasons why judges are held to higher standards of behavior and — in an assumed abdication of rights — to ethical guidelines they sign onto before they engage in election activities.

Recently a panel of three appeals court judges unanimously found that one of their colleagues nevertheless deliberately and willfully violated the Wisconsin code of judicial ethics, which in turn is a violation of Wisconsin statutory law.

Yet they also unanimously recommended that the Wisconsin Judicial Commission's ethics complaint against Gableman be dismissed — because Gableman had requested that it be dismissed.

So, if you're a politically ambitious judge with negligible scruples you may with deliberative aforethought tell scurrilous lies about another judge, and if anybody happens to complain, all you have to do is ask three other judges to please have that complaint dismissed.

And if that recommendation is accepted by another set of judges, then you've successfully gotten away with lying without any official, professional consequences whatsoever. Gotten away with it upon submission of your own request to get away with it.

All because, we are instructed, the operation of ethics may only occur within the stilted parameters of often incoherent legalistic theories.*